Remabulous

on giving up gracefully

june has been a month of overload: many visits, out of town trips, new developments in my business, and just general busywork. so why shouldn't i feel ok about giving up on scriptfrenzy since as of today, the last day, i have only 6,208 words out of the required 20,000. i suppose i could have pounded it out in one day like milda threatened to for hers, but as the meds i am on just made me pass out like a dead tree for three hours i have made a rule: sometimes you just have to walk away from the keyboard.

just learning...

the other night i was driving across town coming home from my writing class and noticed that the car in front of me had stuck a sign in the back window, which read, "just learning stick shift" with a smiley face next to it. i realized that this made me much more patient with the driver and less jumpy and stressed as i frequently am driving here. i gave the person more space at lights to get started and kept thinking what a good job they were doing.

it was funny to notice this reaction as i am almost always hesitant to expose a weakness i know i have in my knowledge and skills. i will either avoid working in that area, or study and plow away until i do feel competent rather than simply admitting i don't know how to do something.

i wonder in what other areas this might be useful...

oh to be able to clone myself!

i wish there were four of me. possibly more. this seems to be the dilemma of the creatively and self-employed.  i seem to have allowed every single second of my time for the month of june to be double and triple booked. here is what i would do with an extra cast of three carolines.

thanks to ryan gessner's excellent and savvy self-portrait from his flickr group rg365.

i survived asking for help!

just a quick note to share that i had a lot of fodder for consideration after writing my previous post about ways to survive a busy schedule. i was able to follow all of my own advice, but had a terrible time convincing myself it was ok to ask for help with the things i cannot handle myself.

however, with concentration, deep breathing, and some mental readjustment, i sent out a series of e-mails and have since found a great webmaster at a reasonable price, a friend who knows about the problems i have been having with site configuration(die mx settings die!), and have been brave enough to let someone else read the terrible screenplay i have been hacking away at because he actually wants to help consult on it. amazing!

thank you very much to kristen, victor, chris, and charles for being my heroes and making the process of consulting other people with problems a fun one, rather than a scary one.

apologies for the short update, but as i said before- let people know when your schedule is madness. i am letting you all know. more soon- this time next week i will be a new woman.

back in the saddle again?

no, my house didn't get blown up. this is from the universal studio tour i took with my friend sean while he was visiting. i am starting to see it as a representation of my crazy month.

back from boston... and a bit disoriented. quick jaunts to the east coast always leave me scattered. it seems that june's goal is just that; scattering. despite my increasingly hey mon experience (i am up to four jobs now, i think) the running around and to-ing and fro-ing of this month makes me feel like i am doing this crazy workout challenge, too.

oi veh. here we have the challenge of the self-employed freelancer: how to maintain control  of your time in the face of chaos? i have a few strategies, and hope that sharing them will motivate me to follow them more thoroughly.

image: caroline donahue for remabulous

beantown party (where the air smells good)

am off for a few days to boston. apologies for the day off... i was stuck on a plane. am struck by the air on the east coast. it is softer than l.a.'s and smells like trees with real leaves. we took a little stroll around jamaica pond today. my brother had to get his daily exercise so as not to lose a bet with friends (3 months, cardio 6 days a week. they're crazy). i was so struck with how lush everything is here. big plush grass, giant leaves. even though i grew up in the same environment, it feels really different as i have really become a california girl in the last six or seven years since i first moved out west. still, there are things i miss: thunderstorms, fall leaves, and the smell of wet air after rain.

what do you miss from early memories? can you tap into one of these this week? i am finding that this air smell is making me want to create. find your memory and make something of it. perhaps  nostalgia is the most powerful motivator. grab onto it and see what you find. then write in and share...

image: basykes via flickr

cary tennis strikes again

one of the pitfalls of the self-employed is knowing when to pull the plug. either at the end of the day or for- gasp- a whole week. i am already finding myself getting a little crazy on days i can't work, even if it is because people i like are in town or i have left town to hang out with them. it is important to remember that vacation ultimately helps your business run better. if nothing else, because you are not so harried, desperate-looking, and bloodshot. people are freaked out by the tense and miserable. if you want to be successful at your own business, either as an entrepreneur or an artist (ok artists do get a bit of leeway on looking nuts, but we are trying to get past that image, aren't we?) you need to get away or at least put down the brushes and step away from the e-mail for periods of time. artists cannot stay inspired in a vacuum.

i found this article by cary tennis, salon.com's advice columnist, and thought his insistence that self-employed people learn to go away too was  a well-written reminder to us all.

and i am walking the talk- i will be going away to celebrate the big 3-0 in august for a whole week. so where are you going to relax this summer??

to read the article, click here.

a new lady business to love: shanna murray

i found out about shanna murray through another site i love, decor8. for those of you who don't yet read decor8, don't waste another minute. i have found so many wonderful gifts, ideas, design inspiration and general yummyness from that site, i can't even tell you.

and shanna murray, her beautiful blog, site, and etsy shop are my latest discovered treasure. i am also pleased to announce that i am the proud new owner of her "when mac was swimming" pillow, made for the month of june. i am a big smug, as there was only one made. i like to be special. read on to learn why shanna is, besides being remabulous's featured site for june...

image: shannamurray.com

big things afoot!

remabulous is going to be undergoing some changes this summer. as most of you know, along with working as an artist, writer, and freelancer, i have been building my coaching practice in the los angeles area. i also conduct sessions via the phone from anywhere, so if you are interested in checking it out, i do offer a free sample consultation to new clients. email me for more information about that.

with that said, there are going to be some changes to the remabulous site to reflect the steps i am taking to expand my business. read on for the details...

image: brookenovak via flickr

ingenuity

went up to see the uberorgan by tim hawkinson at the getty center yesterday. pretty cool- he took weird twine and plastic bags and painted long strips of paper and wired the whole thing up and it actually plays music. now music you'd recognize, but music nonetheless. so if you have ideas to make something large and ungainly and strange- then please try it!  it certainly made our trip up there.  here is a section of the piece...

to see more images of the uberorgan, check out the flickr set i made of my images of it. viva the absurd!

all images by caroline donahue for remabulous.